


Soul Marks

by spellingbee



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Artists, Bands, Canon Non-Binary Character, Minor Character Death, Music, Musicians, Other, POV First Person, Resurrection, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Temporary Character Death, Undead, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-13 18:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellingbee/pseuds/spellingbee
Summary: Your soul mark starts to fade after your soulmate dies.If you're lucky, you might have a second soulmate out there somewhere, and you'll gain a new soul mark when the time is right.I'd never thought that I could have another soulmate after Juliana died, but ten years later I'm staring down at a faint mark on my wrist.The problem? It's not a new mark.It's the same mark I shared with Juliana.





	1. Juliana Dies

**Author's Note:**

> Week 3 of posting whatever I write seems to have gone pretty well!  
> Sorry it's another original thing and not fandom. The only thing I've been into lately is like, Fall Out Boy and iDKHOW and I'm not comfortable writing about Real Actual Humans so. Original Works it is.
> 
> Anyway, wanted to do a soulmates thing! First chapter is mostly backstory. Have fun!

Your soul mark starts to fade after your soulmate dies.

Death is the only thing that can sever a soul bond, as anyone over the age of thirteen can tell you. 

Your soul mark is a physical manifestation of that bond, and it begins to appear the time you’ll be meeting your soulmate, a faint mark unique to the two of you, and it darkens when you meet and grow closer to each other.

When one part of a soul bond dies, the soul mark fades and, eventually, disappears. The soul mark disappears forever, and though there’s a chance you have another soulmate out there somewhere, and you’ll receive a new mark when it’s time for you to meet them, the mark will be a new one, and you’ll never have your first mark gracing the skin on the inside of your wrist again.

Of course, having a second soulmate isn’t likely, anyway--a bond which is truly soul deep is rare enough that most people will only experience it once in a lifetime. For most people, once their soulmate dies, their wrist remains blank for the rest of their life.

That’s why I was so surprised to find a faint blue mark beginning to appear on my wrist, over ten years after I lost my first soul mate. But what really took the cake in the whole situation is that it wasn’t a new mark.

It was my original soul mark.

  
  


==========

 

My soul mark first appeared when I was fifteen years old. It started out as a pale blue, almost the exact shade of blue as the veins showing through my skin, and the design was a knot of sorts, thin lines twisting around each other in an intricate pattern which had never been seen before, and would only ever be seen on the wrist of one other person.

I was deeply fascinated by the mark, eyes trained on my wrist at all hours of the day, turning my head this way and that to see it from as many angles as possible. My sketchbooks were soon full of sketches and doodles of the mark, many attempts to draw it as faithfully as possible.

Over the course of the next month, the blue slowly darkened until it was the color of the night sky, standing out against my pale skin. It was beautiful, just as my soulmate was.

Her name was Juliana, and I didn’t even have to look at her wrist to know she was the one for me. Her hair was the first thing I noticed: chopped short and ragged, dyed a dark blue which had begun to fade to a greener hue. Her skin was a dark tan, her eyes a shining, twinkling warm brown. She was beautiful, and the mark on her wrist, the same shape and color as mine, proclaimed to the world that she was mine, and I was hers.

I was fifteen, and she was sixteen, and it was summertime and we were inseparable.

Juliana taught me about music. She was kind of a punk, with a silver stud in her nose and a ring in her lip, and her music taste reflected that. She had her guitar with her at all times, ready to play anything and everything at the drop of a hat. She taught me how to play, where to place my fingers. She taught me how to sing--or, rather, how to sing in front of people without falling victim to the sickness which plagued my stomach in every such situation.

In return, I taught her about art. My sketchbooks filled faster than ever, Juliana’s eyes and hands and smiles a common sight among the pages. Juliana didn’t like to draw as much as I did, but she loved to watch me draw, and she had this uncanny ability to choose the perfect colors for everything. 

Our summer days were spent sitting beside each other, or across from each other, at dingey diners and open fields and in our bedrooms and at the neighborhood pool, her guitar in her hands and my sketchbook in mine.

We weren’t in love. Not in a romantic sense, at any rate. We were happiest when we were together, this deep affection between us that we were both keenly aware of, but we hadn’t fallen in love. Not yet. We both knew that, with time, we would fall in love. It was inevitable, and welcome. It was only a matter of time, and we had more than enough of that. 

Until we didn’t.

Juliana died that summer, just two short months after I met her, an undiagnosed brain tumor taking her from me, taking her from the world, in the middle of the night with no warning.

I was heartbroken.

Of course I was! She was my soulmate, my other half. She was my friend. She was someone I wanted to fall in love with. Gone, in an instant.

My mark began to fade immediately, turning from the brilliant night-sky blue to the pale blue of the blood in my veins within the month, and disappearing altogether the day I went back to school in the fall.

I hadn’t drawn anything during the course of that month besides Juliana: her face, her hair, the mark shared between our wrists. I was desperate to keep her, to keep any part of her I could in my memories. Our time together had been short, but I never wanted to forget it, or her. I didn’t want to forget Juliana.

Juliana, who was dead. Juliana, who played guitar like she was born to it. Juliana, who had never been given the chance to fall in love.

  
  


==========

  
  


It took me a while, but eventually, I was able to move on from her loss. I focused on school, and on my art. I bought a guitar and continued learning to play it, continued singing. Music was Juliana’s gift to me, and though I wasn’t as heartbroken as I had been, I still wanted to share something of her with the world around me. I wanted the world to know what it was missing by taking Juliana away so soon.

I applied for and was accepted to an incredible art institute on the other side of the country. There, I refined my skills as a comic artist and made incredible friends, some of whome helped me to discover that maybe I wasn’t quite as male as I’d always assumed. Nonbinary was a new term they taught me, and something which fit me far better than I’d have ever thought it would. I graduated after four years with several job offers already on the table.

I took the job which offered the best pay, of course: a big comic publisher with several popular titles under its belt. 

It didn’t take long before I was tired of it. Less than a year there, inking and coloring other people’s art, long hours with little to no time to work on my own. I felt stuck, burnt out, but this was what I had gone to school for. This was what I wanted.

Wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it what I wanted?

I stayed there a few more months before turning in my letter of resignation. Comics may have been my truest love, but I couldn’t flourish there, not how I wanted to.

Not how Juliana would want me to.

I took up another job at a smaller publishing house, one with shorter hours and smaller titles, which allowed me time to focus on my own art. I managed to get something of mine published. Just a small, twenty-page story in an anthology, but it was a start. It was more than I’d done before, and I loved it.

I had time to work on my music, too, which I had been neglecting for over a year. I had started writing songs sometime during college, little melodies with lyrics that were probably too flowery to make truly good music, but in my defense I had always focused more on storytelling and dialogue for comics than what constituted a good song lyric.

Still, I had written some songs that sounded decent. Songs that I was tentatively proud of, songs that I thought would sound decent with some polishing. 

Why not head to an open-mic night at one of the cafes nearby? It would be a good chance for me to share Juliana’s legacy, and maybe I would be able to meet someone who could give me some pointers on how to fix up my songs.

As it turned out, my musical skills were maybe a little bit better than I’d thought, because it only took a couple of open-mic nights at my favorite coffee shop before I had someone ask me to join their band.

Melanie was a short woman with hair as fiery as her personality, plump and cheerful and refusing to take shit from anybody. She was a pianist who had co-founded a punk band with a few friends, and they were missing a vocalist. She thought I would be a good fit, and invited me to come audition for them.

I agreed, and the next day I met her and the rest of the band at her apartment. I played my guitar and sang a few covers for them, and some of my own work. They offered me a place as lead vocalist, I accepted, and suddenly my days were full again, but this time pleasantly so. Full of art and music, the two things I lived for.

And then, a couple of months after I joined the band, I noticed a spot of blue on my wrist.

It was my soul mark.

My soul mark. And Juliana’s.

Juliana, who had been dead for over ten years. Juliana, who was my soulmate.

Juliana, who was apparently coming back to life.


	2. Maybe Juliana Isn't As Dead As Everyone Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonist's soul mark darkens, and deadlines loom closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> week 4 of the year-long writing challenge thing has been completed!  
> also has anyone listened to that hazy shade of winter cover by gerard way + ray toro? bc i've been obsessed with it all weekend.   
> i mean, the umbrella academy trailer was pretty heckin great too, but i'm like, in love with ray toro's guitar skills.
> 
> WARNINGS for chapter 2: some discussion of vomiting (no actual vomiting occurs), mentions of death, swearing.

_ Fuck _ , I thought, slamming my hand down on my nightstand in an attempt to locate and shut off my phone, which was currently blaring the most annoying song I could find. 

I couldn’t find my phone, and I sat up with a huff, squinting over at my nightstand as my eyes adjusted to the light in the room. The phone was on the opposite side of the nightstand, too far for me to reach from my horizontal position, and I remembered setting it there last night so that I would be forced to sit up and move around without just shutting off the alarm and going back to sleep.

I leaned over and grabbed the phone, silencing it. Nighttime Me was always such a dick to Morning Me. One day I’d kick their ass for that.

But today was not that day.

With a sigh, I stretched and got out of bed, snagging the clothes I’d left on my desk chair last night and heading to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

As I showered, I thought over my plans for the day. My actual job came first: there was a deadline coming up, and one of the bigger comic titles I worked on was coming to a conclusion. It was a big time for everyone there. I should still have time to work on an original comic of my own while I was there, though. Otherwise, I’d have to do that between work and band practice.

Band practice, which was the second thing on my list for today. I was lead vocalist and guitarist for Microwave Fire (named after an unfortunate kitchen accident experienced by two of the band’s founders, Melanie and Jason), and we had a pretty big gig coming up soon, opening for a bigger local band. There were rumors that there'd be a few people from record labels there, so we wanted to go all-out. We’d been practicing every day for the past couple weeks, and our dedication definitely showed.

I closed my eyes to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. I’d been letting it get pretty long lately, wanting to look a little more androgynous so people weren’t so shocked by the fact that I was nonbinary, but honestly having hair longer than shoulder-length was pretty annoying. I’d probably cut it again soon.

Tilting my head back and opening my eyes again, I caught sight of the faint blue mark on my right wrist, and my gut twisted.

It was definitely darker than it had been yesterday. Knowing it wouldn’t do any good, I scrubbed at it with a bar of soap. Still there, still dark, still identical to the mark which had graced this exact spot on my skin for a brief two months, ten years ago.

I dropped my hand back to my side, letting the water run over my head to rinse the rest of the shampoo out, then shut the water off and clambered out of the shower, grabbing a towel to pat myself dry. The mark was almost as dark as it had been when I met Juliana, and while that should be exciting, I could only feel an impending sense of doom, settled like a rock in the pit of my stomach. Juliana was dead, and the fact that my new soul mark was the exact same as our shared mark had to be some kind of horrific fluke. Right? Why else would this happen?

I shoved that thought to the back of my head and quickly finished dressing for the day, throwing on a warm and colorful hoodie--thoroughly stained with paints and markers, as most of my work clothes were--and some jeans, then tying my hair back in a low ponytail. I wasn’t terribly concerned with looking good today, as comfort is infinitely more important than fashion when dealing with deadlines.

I grabbed my keys, my bag, and a granola bar, then launched myself out my front door and down the stairs. The elevator in my building had been out for the past couple of weeks, so I was grateful that I was only on the third floor, and not the ninth or something. If I was, I’d have started looking for a new place to live as soon as the elevator had started acting up, honestly.

I caught the bus and made it to work a few minutes early, so I started working on the "official" project right away. The page layouts were finished, and all I had to do was touch up the colors, which actually didn’t take too long. By lunchtime, I had already met today's deadline, which meant I had the rest of the day to work on my newest project, a story about a superpowered zombie girl.

I was hoping to get three full issues greenlit, and if that went well, I had a whole extended story planned out, with a bunch of other characters who just wouldn’t fit into something as short as what I was currently working with. Hopefully I’d be able to expand on her universe and tell her story in full, but I wouldn’t be too concerned if I was stuck with just the original three--they were the most important part of her story, the part I needed to tell the most. If her story became a major title of the publisher, that would just be icing on the cake, really.

While I was working, one of my coworkers stopped by to peer over my shoulder. “Hey Ash,” she said. “Whoa, lookin’ good! Is that a rocket-launcher?”

I nodded. “Got a big action scene planned out. Thought it’d be a nice touch, huh? Kinda over-the-top, but not all that weird, considering it’s literally a story about a zombie with superpowers.”

She laughed. “Nah, it’s a good idea! Hey, once you get closer to a finished product, let me know if you want some inking done on it!  _ Howard and Sting-Ray _ is wrapping up soon, and I don’t really wanna get stuck on the  _ Furball _ team again, y’know?”

“Sure thing, Liv. I’ll let you know if it gets that far.”

Liv squeezed my shoulder. “It will, Ash. It definitely will, don’t doubt it!” She paused, then let go of me, arm dropping to her side again. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work. Duty calls!”

“Catch ya later!” I called to her retreating form, then went back to work, sketching out some more rough ideas for the big fight scene.

I worked the rest of the day without really thinking about my soul mark, which had been helpfully covered by the sleeve of my hoodie while I worked. Now that I was heading home on the bus, though, I couldn’t help but push my sleeve up a bit to look at the mark. Was it just me, or was it even darker than it had been earlier?

“Oh my!” a voice from beside my ear made me jump, and I turned to face an older woman, who was leaning over the back of my seat to peer intently at my wrist. I hastily covered it up, and she pulled away slightly. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding very sorry at all, “it’s just that I couldn’t help but notice your soul mark.”

Oh my God. Please don’t tell me that this woman had the same mark on her wrist. I could  _ not _ deal with this whole duplicate soul mark thing ending up with me just ending up bonded with a middle-aged woman on the bus or something.

“It’s beautiful,” she continued. “And quite dark! Have you met your soulmate, then, or…?”

Okay, so it didn’t sound like she was about to claim me as her soulmate, thankfully. It was still a pretty weird thing to deal with on the bus, but at least I wouldn’t have to marry this person. 

I shook my head. “No, I haven’t met them yet.” I ignored the stupid little voice in my head telling me that  _ maybe I  _ had _ met them, that maybe Juliana would be back somehow _ , and continued, “I think I’m gonna meet ‘em in the next few days, though. I’m excited.”

The woman grinned at me and reached over to give my shoulder a squeeze, which I was not really a fan of, considering I had just met this woman on a public bus. I didn’t say anything, though, tried to just let my stiffened posture do the talking, and she let go of me. “Well, I wish you the best,” she said, and then stood, just before the bus stopped. “I hope your soulmate is everything you could hope for,” she called over her shoulder, joining the throng of people to slip out the doors and onto the street.

Everything I could hope for? I looked down at my wrist again, eyes tracing over the deep blue lines on my skin. Everything I could hope for…

_ Juliana. _

  
  


==========

  
  


Band practice was about the same as usual. Everyone was pretty good friends, so there was always a fair amount of dicking around, even with the big upcoming gig looming over us.

We’d mostly just been trying to nail down a set to play the last few days, and while we all knew what songs we wanted to play, it was just figuring out the order and proper transition from one to the next we were struggling with.

“Are you kidding me, Nikki, we can’t just go from  _ Sunshine _ to a goddamn  _ Panic! _ cover, they’re two completely different sounds!” Melanie was perched on her piano bench with one leg up, her chin resting atop her knee in a gentle fashion while her expression screamed pure rage, her normally light skin a blotchy red.

“Yeah, and that’s exactly why it’d be so kickass!” Nikki, Microwave Fire’s drummer, said from behind her drum kit. “If we can nail the transition from those two, everyone’ll know how good we are and we’ll definitely get signed, like, right then.”

“And if we mess it up,” Jason, our bassist, chimed in, waving one dark hand dismissively. “then there’s no way in hell we’re getting signed. Nik, we’re great without doing something like that, let’s just figure out a safer transition, okay? The label dudes’re gonna be practically drooling over us, anyway.”

I frowned, idling plucking at the strings on my guitar. “I dunno...I’m kinda on Nikki’s side. If we take a risk like that and pull it off, it’ll score us major points. Like, we know there’s gonna be at least a couple people from different record labels there, right? So if we do something really impressive--like pulling off a flawless transition from Jason’s own  _ Sunshine _ to  _ This is Gospel _ \--then we’ll basically have our pick of labels, right? We can go with whoever’s better, not just sign with the first label who offers out of fear that that’s all we’ll ever get, right?”

“ _ Thank _ you, Ash!” Nikki called, raising one fist high above her head. “That’s what I was tryin’ to say!”

Melanie sighed, kicking her legs out and collapsing on her side on the piano bench, one arm dangling down to touch the rough concrete of the garage floor. “I mean, if you put it that way, it  _ does _ make sense. But, fuck, if we mess it up--”

“Then we won’t mess it up.” I stood up from my place on the floor, adjusting my guitar strap. “This is good, guys, it’s a great idea that’ll really showcase our talents. We’ve just gotta make sure we can get this, yeah? Gotta practice our asses off.”

Jason groaned, but stood as well, picking his bass up as he did so. “Fine,” he said, frowning at each of us individually, “I’ll go along with this, but if it fails miserably, just know that I’m never gonna let any of you guys live it down.”

Nikki let out a laugh. “Wouldn’t believe anything different, Jace,” she said, and then slammed her drumsticks down on one of the cymbals. “Now, let’s get to work, Microwave Fire!”

  
  


=========

  
  


After practice, Melanie beckoned me over to sit beside her on the piano bench. I dropped beside her, taking a long drink out of my water bottle, and she scooched over so she could sit at an angle and face me.

“So,” she said. “Any luck on the soulmate front?”

I frowned at her and pulled my sleeve back, to show that my soul mark was still just dark, not the vivid, colorful sort of darkness it would take on once I’d met my second soulmate. “You think I wouldn’t say anything if I’d met ‘em? I’ll tell you guys as soon as it happens, obviously.”

She chuckled. “Well, I mean, I’d hope so.” Melanie leaned back to tilt her face toward the garage ceiling, eyes falling closed. Her orange curls were damp with the sweat that always came with performing music of any kind. “Man, I can’t wait to meet this person. Is it gonna be weird for you? I mean, since you lost your first soulmate, and all.”

I shrugged. “I dunno,” I said honestly, because really, how was I supposed to know that? Sure, I’d known Juliana for only a couple months, and we hadn’t really been in love, but would that influence how I felt about my new soulmate? If I did have a new soulmate, anyway. I hadn’t told my friends that this soul mark was the same as my previous one, because that was just. Well. It was weird. “I mean, it’s kinda always weird to meet your soulmate, isn’t it? Like, no matter what, that’s someone you’re gonna fall in love with. Someone you’re probably gonna spend your life with. And that’s, well...it’s weird. Isn’t it?”

“I guess so.” Melanie twisted her neck a little and opened one eye to look at me. “But it’s more exciting than weird, yeah? I mean, I don’t know for sure--I haven’t met my soulmate yet, you know that--but I think it would be more exciting. I can’t wait to have someone like that.” She sighed wistfully, then shot a look over to the other corner of the garage, where Jason and Nikki stood talking. “They’re lucky. They’ve already got their people.”

I nodded. “Yeah. They’re pretty happy, huh?” Jason has met his soulmate in college, and Nikki had met hers a few months before I’d joined the band. They were both more than "pretty happy," and I was only a _little_ jealous of them.

Melanie nodded, then looked down at her own blank wrist. “I know some people don’t meet their soulmate ‘til they’re, like, in their fifties or sixties or whatever, but I still kinda feel like a late bloomer. I’m almost 30, y’know? I’m ready to settle down! I just want my person.” She sighed again, dropping her head into her hands.

I chuckled lightly and patted her back. “I know, Mel. You’ll get your mark soon, I bet. And then we’ll all be able to be soppy and romantic and shit.”

She laughed, leaning against me.  “Yeah,” she said with a small smile. “Yeah. I can’t wait.”

I hoped this wouldn’t be as weird as I was afraid it would be. After all, what were the chances Juliana would come back from the dead?

  
  


==========

 

The rest of the week passed by in much the same way: my Actual Job (I managed to finish everything by the deadline, which gave me plenty of time to work on my own project, which was also coming along great), followed by band practice (we had, in fact, managed to get the transition perfect, so as long as we didn’t fuck it up onstage, we’d be fine), interspersed with a hell of a lot of freaking out about my soul mark.

I still hadn’t met my new soulmate by the end of the week, and I knew it would have to be soon. The mark was as dark as it could be without being classified as black, and I was about to go onstage and perform for the biggest venue I’d ever played.

This wasn’t a terrifying combination of events or anything like that. Absolutely not.

As I was peering out from behind the curtains at the crowd beyond--and, really, it was just an old theater, not like, an  _ arena _ or something, I really needed to calm down--Nikki came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me, resting her chin on my shoulder. 

“Hey, Ash,” she said. “You okay?”

I swallowed and nodded, turning away from the crowd to look at her. “I think I’m gonna meet my soulmate tonight,” I said in a whisper I’m sure could barely be heard over the excitement of the crowd beyond (who were really here for the band Microwave Fire was opening for, not actually for Microwave Fire, oh my God Ash calm down).

“Yeah, that’s not really surprising,” she said with a grin. “I mean, there’s like a specific window of time between getting the mark and meeting your soulmate. You got the mark a month ago, right?”

At my nod, she continued, “I met Tess exactly 30 days after my mark started appearing. It doesn’t take more than, like, first-grade level math to figure out what day is 30 days away, y’know? Plus, this night’s the most unusual for you, with the most new people for you to meet, so just like, statistically speaking, this would be the night you’d most likely meet them, y’know?”

I blinked at her. “I mean...you’re not wrong,” I said, slowly. “But that doesn’t really help me to calm down.”

“Oh!” she looked surprised, eyes opening wide so that the whites of her eyes stood out in stark contrast against the dark brown of her skin. “Oh, you’re nervous. Sorry, of course you’re nervous. Fuck.”

“Fuck,” I agreed. “I’ve gotta make sure we do a good enough job that we can get signed, and I’ve also gotta be aware of the fact that my soulmate is probably here somewhere. Right now.” I swallowed again. “Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up.”

“No you’re not!” Jason was suddenly standing next to me now, one hand on his bass guitar and the other clenched tightly around my upper arm. 

I looked up at him. “Um...I’m not?” It sure felt like I was going to.

“Ash, you’re fine,” he said. “Look, you’ve gone out and performed in front of people before, right?”

“Uh...uh-huh.”

“You’ve done it mostly alone, too. Which is, like, way scarier than being in a band, because when you’re alone, you’re  _ alone _ , and when you’re part of a band, you’ve got other people to back you up and help you out!”

“I mean, you’re right, but also my soulmate is out here somewhere and I’m gonna meet them tonight and I’m gonna throw up.”

“No you’re not!” said Melanie from behind us, sounding overly cheerful. “You know why you’re not?”

“Um, no, not really.”

“You’re not going to throw up because you’re our vocalist, and you can’t sing properly if your throat’s all messed up from stomach acid. You’re also not gonna throw up because you don’t have stage fright. You know this. You thrive onstage. And, finally, you’re not gonna throw up because if you throw up, your soulmate will see it and you’ll have to live with the fact that you, like, threw up all over your soulmate the first time you met them or something. That’s, like, the opposite of a meet-cute.”

“Oh my God,” I said, feeling light-headed. “Now I’m definitely gonna throw up.” 

“No you’re not!!” Melanie said again. “Because we’re going onstage now!”

_ Fuck. _

 

==========

 

Okay, so I didn’t throw up.

I went up on stage with my friends, and I opened my mouth to sing, and I fuckin’  _ sang _ . It was great. I think it was the best performance we’d ever given, and I actually got so into it that I completely fuckin’ forgot that I was gonna meet my soulmate that night.

All I could think about was the performance. And yes, we nailed that transition. We were getting signed for sure.

Our entire set was about half an hour long, and there was actually some applause and cheering from the audience. Not bad for an unknown opening band. Not bad at all.

And then we were backstage, hugging each other and crying and saying how proud we were of each other, and basically wiping our sweat all over each other in a nasty mess, and then we were being approached by two different record labels because our plan  _ fucking worked _ .

Our plan worked and we had two record labels to choose from. Holy shit.

Jason was the only one of us who was actually coherent enough to talk with the label guys, and he accepted the proffered cards from each and tucked them away somewhere for safekeeping. 

Then the label guys were gone, and we went back to celebrating.

“Oh my God, you guys!” Melanie screamed. “Holy fuck!”

“Yeah!” said Nikki. “Holy  _ fuck _ !”

Jason laughed. “Okay, guys, I guess I’ve gotta hand it to ya. That transition was a good call. The guy from Beehive Records mentioned that specifically.”

“I knew it!” Niki slapped Jason on the back. “So does that mean…?”

Jason sighed, without any bitterness behind it. “Yeah, yeah, drinks are on me.”

Melanie whooped. “Nikki, Ash, you two are lifesavers. Thanks for convincing me to go along with it. And, honestly guys, thanks for all the effort and, like, hard work you put into this! We haven’t even been a fully-formed band that long, this is amazing!”

I put an arm around Melanie’s shoulders and the other around Nikki’s, drawing them into a hug. “It’s easy to work hard when we’re in a band as awesome as this one,” I said. “It doesn’t even feel like work, it’s just fun!”

Jason joined the group hug, squeezing us all together. “I love being in a band with you guys.” He released us after a moment, stepping back and clapping his hands once. “Okay! Now that that’s done, let’s go enjoy the rest of the night, yeah? Celebrate!”

We all turned to head out into the crowd, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one planning out how the best way to rack up a nice tab on Jason’s account.

I was getting ready to follow my friends down the stairs from backstage when I heard someone say from behind me, in a soft, somewhat slurred voice, “Asher?”

I paused. No one had called me Asher since I’d come out as nonbinary. Everyone I knew at the time and most of the people I’d known beforehand had been made aware of the change to my name and pronouns, and I'd introduced myself as Ash to everyone I'd met since. So who the hell was this? 

I turned around to correct them, mouth already open, and I froze. 

There was a woman standing behind me, dressed in dark clothes, like most of the people who’d come to this place. Her skin was a pale tan, her hair long, dark and curly, with some color that might have been a faded green at the ends. She had a stud in her nose and a ring in her lip. It was impossible to tell what color her eyes were in the darkness, but they looked shadowed anyway, sunken.

Still, there was no mistaking who she was.

I swallowed, my jaw snapping shut for a moment before opening again, to form a name I never thought I’d have cause to say again.

“Juliana?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the band is called Microwave Fire because all of my friends are idiots whom i dearly love.  
> also i have no idea how bands and music work, hope it's not too obvious.  
> comments are welcome and appreciated!!


End file.
